


Project Goldfinch

by palladionaigis



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blindness, Canon-Compliant, First chapter is 2064, Gen, Multi, Original Character-centric, Pre-Canon, Second chapter is 2068, Surgery, very minor canon divergences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-23 04:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palladionaigis/pseuds/palladionaigis
Summary: It only took three years from birth for Celie Durand's entire life to change. It's not fair to anyone to have to grow up in war, much less when an Omnic artillery dropped bombs on her home city of Mont-Tremblant, Québec in 2052, causing part of their building to collapse. She was left stuck under the rubble two days, permanently blinded by the explosion, the rest of her family dead. Eleven years in foster care caused her to turn to technology instead of friendships giving her a strange and niche skill set, until she was finally adopted and moved to New York state with a wealthy couple who very quickly showed her an ultimate kindness by flying her to Switzerland to try to restore her sight... and led to her discovering her future in the process.[This is a character study of my Overwatch OC, still currently in the making and at about 133K.]





	1. "Sight" (Introduction: Before Overwatch)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I know it's been a while. I'll be honest with you when I say it has not been easy. I've been going through a really low spot recently with my writing and have been having a greatly hard time being proud of anything I put out. No matter what the subject, it really seemed like my heart wasn't in it, until I started this project for NaNoWriMo this year.
> 
> Project Goldfinch is essentially a character study, comprised of a bunch of oneshots and drabbles, about my OC in the Overwatch universe, Celie Durand. Since we know that there are more Overwatch locations than just Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and logically there HAVE to be backline / technical support agents of that sort, the possibilities are really endless. Of course, because of this, my imagination EXPLODED. Out of the required 50K words I shot up to 80K before I knew it and have continued on, with 84K here now and way more planned (and even more ideas pouring into my head by the day). It's basically my own way of exploring the lore of the game that we don't really get from the usual 6v6 we know so well, and also my way to appreciate and love characters who don't get enough affection from Jeff Kaplan or Michael Chu themselves.
> 
> That being said, this is a very tentative posting - if the reactions aren't good, I'll probably take it down. I'm essentially doing this just to get a read on whether or not anyone would be interested in seeing more of this, and seeing how she interacts with other canon characters and also other OCs (since part of her story takes place in a setting I have complete creative freedom over since we've never seen anything official about it from the game, though we know for certain that it exists). I've got loads of material as is, but this is just the very first part of the story - where Celie meets Mercy, who tries to fix her eyesight.
> 
> Let me know what you guys think, and we'll see where this goes from here!

Life has only recently started to go well. There’s something about the security of knowing that in a few more days she’ll be able to go back to waking up in her _own_ bed, in her _own_ room, all because two rich middle-aged investors never got to have a child of their own. Granted, as far as adoptive parents went for suddenly having a fourteen-year-old stranger in their home, they were _very_ loving people (and were about to spend an exorbitant amount of money on something that might not even work, just to make _her_ life _easier_ ), but Celie is not used to knowing a family or its stability.

 

Yet, here she is. She doesn’t know what Zürich looks like, but she assumes it’s pretty, and her heart leaps into her throat for what feels like the millionth time this week when she realizes that if this surgery works, she’ll _know_.

 

A gentle knock sounds at the door. Celie sits up. She can’t see who it is when the handle clicks open, but they’re very quick to introduce themselves. They know she’s blind. “Celie?” The voice that asks for her is feminine and bright.

 

“Yes?” She’s learned it’s polite to smile and stick a hand out. Usually the right hand.

 

“I’m Doctor Angela Ziegler,” a very sweet, lilting German accent greets her and soft hands envelop her own, “it’s so nice to finally meet you. Your mother has told me so much about you.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Celie responds right back. She thinks that Angela is probably very pretty from how she sounds. Not that she even really knows what _pretty_ could determine. She knows what people look like - standing on two legs, a torso, shoulders, a head atop a neck - that was one thing she walked away with when it came to her first three years’ worth of memories,so she can think of people as kind of blob-shaped bipeds, but she can never picture faces. It makes things a lot less personal, but she’s learned to recognize voices fairly well.

 

“I’m the head surgeon here, and I’ll be doing the operation to try to restore your sight. Are you nervous?” The doctor’s tone is playful, like she knows. Celie rubs her neck.

 

“Is it that obvious? To be fair, I… can’t actually see my face, so I have no way of knowing if I look nervous…”

 

“You look just fine,” Angela laughs and Celie is sure then that the woman is beautiful. “Has anyone gone ahead and explained to you what’s going to happen in a few hours?” A scraping noise sounds. She’s probably getting a chair. “I’d like to, if no one else has.”

 

“I’ve only heard bits and pieces,” Celie answers. “I think that they’re convinced I won’t understand the terms just because I’m young.”

 

“Nonsense,” Angela says, and Celie’s earlier suspicion of the chair is confirmed since the position in the room of Angela’s voice has changed - it’s lower down now, and slightly off to her side. This is the first time she’s felt like any of the medical staff here respects her, because Angela very carefully and meticulously goes through the process. It sounds sort of gross and sort of dangerous at some parts, but hearing it makes her a lot less nervous than she was before.

 

As they prep her for surgery, Celie is nervous but Angela is always careful to assure her, or keep a hand on her when she’s around so Celie knows she is there. Celie appreciates the amount of care that goes into Angela’s observance that she doesn’t have any visual information about her surroundings to go on. Before she knows it, she’s on the bed and they’re telling her to count backwards from ten, and she’s trying to remember the sound of her new mother’s voice telling her she was going to do great before she’d been wheeled down the hall, and she gets to seven before she’s out.

 

 

...

 

 

It’s morning.

 

Celie can tell because the window is open (she feels a breeze on her face that’s too sporadic and fresh to be a standing fan or the hospital vents) and the smell of the fresh air, being Zürich, she gets the aromas of one or two of the several small cafés nearby. She smiles at it. She hopes she’ll be able to try some of the food while she’s still here. The one thing she does hate about being blind is that sometimes, she can’t tell whether or not she’s alone in the room. This is one of the times she knows there’s people with her, though. She hears the flip of a page - someone is probably flipping through a newspaper or magazine, and then there’s the soft slow breathing of someone at rest. She starts to sit up and feels at her face gently. Gauze. It’s all still just dark.

 

“Celie?” Her mother’s voice is from her side and a hand takes hers. “How do you feel? Call the doctor, dear, she wanted to know when Celie woke up.” Sure enough, footsteps and a click, probably the call button.

 

“I feel fine. A little groggy… and I think itchy from the tape on my face.”

 

“We called Doctor Ziegler, she should be here soon.”

 

“How long was I out?” Celie asks softly. It’s particularly hard for her to keep a day/night cycle, but surgery? She’s not sure how long she’d sleep from that.

 

“You had the surgery mid-day yesterday. They thought you’d wake up by nighttime but told us not to worry since you don’t have much of a cycle to go on. It’s only nine, so it isn’t too late.” Her mother is still at her side a few minutes later as the door opens. Celie figures who it is.

 

“Alright, _liebling,_ how are you feeling?” Doctor Ziegler’s voice grows closer with the sound.

 

“I’m okay. The tape is kind of itchy.”

 

“I know, I’m sorry. They really had to secure it so that your eyes would be kept closed the first eight hours while the biotics can start to work and try to restructure the damaged tissue. We’ve never tried to do it with tissue quite this damaged with scar tissue from the age of it, so we are fairly sure there is going to be some pain. It may cause you to want to close your eyes to it, but I need you to know that’s alright, Celie. It might not work right away, either, and it may not be perfect, but I promise you we will do our best, yes?” Angela asks, and Celie nods at her words, sitting patiently until she feels soft fingertips touch her face. The tape doesn’t really hurt to be taken off.

 

She feels air on her eyelids. This is it. “Can I try?” She asks after several moments of silence.

 

“Be gentle, _liebling,_ remember I said there would be pain.”

 

Celie tries to open her eyes and is blinded all over again. In the span of a second it goes from darkness to blinding light and pain that hits like a brick to the face. She tries to fight past the whimper that comes out, and the first wave of pain, but can’t. It breaks her.

 

Within just the first hour of her new knowledge that the procedure might not have worked, she realizes she’s fourteen and now, whether she likes it or not, might be living with all of this guilt for the rest of her life. She wonders how long it will take for her to earn the amount of money this procedure cost so that she can pay back the man and woman who already had to pay a ludicrous sum just for her to be a part of their family in the first place. Doctor Ziegler tries to reassure her that there’s still time and that the pain will start to go away and then they can truly test how much, if any, of her vision came back. When she leaves, Celie starts to cry anyway, apologizing to her new parents, her brain logically telling her not to be guilty yet, and to _wait,_ but this was her first big test on her own, with her new family, and she feels already like she’s failed it, and so she lays back down holding her face and waiting for the pain to stop throbbing so harshly.

 

She doesn’t have much of an appetite and hardly eats lunch or anything in the afternoon, falling asleep in the evening for a nap, hoping to sleep through the pain, still a slow but very strong throb behind her eyelids. She’d been so excited about all this. She’d gone through it all to try to learn the alphabet just through tactile so she wouldn’t be so behind on learning how to read. She’d been gifted money from new relatives who wanted her to “pick out her first outfit” with the colors she would “ _finally_ be able to see”. It _hurts._

 

When she wakes again, it’s night. She knows that from the fact that she reaches for her watch and presses the button on the side that reads out the time to her. “ _9:47 PM”_ , it announces in its tiny, electronic voice, a familiar comfort in the hospital room. She’d built the small processor into and on top of a regular watch she’d found about two years ago and since then it had been a companion of sorts to keep her on her cycle. Her parents aren’t here. She can’t hear anyone in the room breathing. She presses another button on the top of her watch. _“We’re out getting dinner, be back soon,”_ the tiny voice says, announcing the message her new parents had left for her. She sighs and leans back when she realizes it. Her eyes, and the pain that had been coming from them earlier, had slowed to a very dull throb instead of the persistent and strong pain it had been before. From the sounds and smells earlier, the window and chairs are off to one side, and the door is to the other. She takes a long, deep breath, and tries again.

 

It’s uncomfortable. It’s all too bright, and it _hurts_ , like someone is pressing a blunt object into her eyes. The _pressure_ is almost unbearable, but she fights even harder this time, refusing to let it beat her. She keeps blinking. It wouldn’t be fair to her parents if this didn’t work. They did this for her. She _has_ to try for them at the very least.

 

What feels like ages pass. Brightness, pain, blink, repeat.

 

Over and over.

 

Until the room starts to darken to a more comfortable light level… and comes into focus. _Clear_ focus. It’s not quite instantaneous, but it almost feels like the biotics have fixed the tissue and are only _just_ realizing what their new job is actually supposed to be.

 

The breath she draws in doesn’t catch anyone’s attention. She’s still alone. Her watch does not buzz with any additional messages. She’s not hungry yet. Wordlessly, she stands and walks to the window. Promptly, she starts to cry again, hand against the glass as she stands there.

 

Zürich is gorgeous. She’s sure New York is too, but something about this place… maybe that it’s Europe, and the romanticism comes just from that, and what she’d heard about it?

 

The door slides open, but Celie doesn’t really notice at first, since she’s caught up in admiring her first skyline. There are a ton of buildings around, the largest of which carries a strange symbol atop it, surrounded by other, smaller, glittering skyscrapers with some of the city’s historical architecture still somewhere underneath. “Celie, _liebling?_ ” Doctor Ziegler’s voice behind her suddenly does startle her and she jumps slightly. “I’m sorry if I scared you. Are you feeling alright? I see you’re up and about.” She says, and Celie turns to face her.

 

All the girl can manage is a weak, “Oh…”

 

Angela is every last bit as pretty as Celie had thought, and then some. Light hair, and vibrant eyes, and so, _so_ beautiful. Even in the low light of the room, the woman’s eyes practically sparkle, not to mention the twinkling of the cityscape reflecting in them. To be fair, she doesn’t know what society’s standard of beauty looks like, nor did she even take a second to look at her own face, but Angela would be the epitome of it if Celie had a choice therein. She can’t help but be a little jealous of how the doctor looks. The woman’s face changes suddenly, confusing her. The inside corners of her eyebrows raise, and the corners of her mouth turn down.

 

“Are you feeling okay?” Ah, so that was what _concern_ looked like.

 

“I’m fine,” Celie blurts out, and before she can stop herself, the next words spill out too. “I was just… thinking about that I was right when I thought you sounded pretty.”

 

Angela laughs at that some, until she stops abruptly and her eyes go wide. “Wait - Celie, your eyes, are they-?”

 

Celie nods and finds herself breaking into a grin. The next look on Angela’s face is what Celie quickly learns is joy, and since she was off the clock and coming to check on her after a meeting across the way, she comes to join her for a while. Angela sits with her for a long time, pointing out buildings and telling her what they are. This is how she learns of what takes place inone of the larger buildings nearby, and the organization that runs it, called Overwatch, and how they’d taken particular interest in what Angela had recently discovered in her research - and now would probably be very interested in what she had apparently just done with Celie’s eyes.

 

The girl wonders about it a lot on the way home, what this _Overwatch_ could really be, and resolves to look it up in secret when she can once she makes it back home.


	2. "Joining Overwatch" (Before the Fall, part one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Celie joins Overwatch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: March 2019  
> Hi all! I'm back! I am writing, re-writing, editing, and going crazy with enthusiasm for this project once again, but I had the equivalent of waking up at 3AM in a cold sweat remembering that callsigns for many backline agents and a lot of active duty agents didn't actually exist until the new Overwatch, so this is a little bit doctored! Chapter 3 should be up fairly soon once I flesh it out just a little more. Thank you so much again to everyone who has commented, left kudos, and bookmarked, you guys mean the world, and I hope as this continues, it will only grow from here!

Up until now, Celie had never been more sure of anything in her entire life. It had been three weeks now since she’d moved into Watchpoint: New York on the edge of Manhattan, some distance from Greenwich Village, with a gorgeous view of the Brooklyn Bridge skyline on days where the visibility was good, and she had downright started to thrive in the ‘city that never sleeps’. The dorms here are generous especially for the area, a more studio-apartment-esque living suite with two (granted, very small) rooms and a small bathroom area, one room being the designated bunking area with window and bed cut into the metal of the wall, and the small walled-off-for-privacy bathroom area, and then the other room was just about the same size and contained a small area for sitting, a bookshelf, and a dresser with several drawers.

Even though her current job description was really just an orientation of sorts, it was mostly to see if she could walk the walk instead of just talking the talk like she did while she was acing her interview. Granted, everyone here at WP:NY was about as nice as people could be - or at least, Celie thought so. Everyone had been extremely welcoming to her.

No one here was an active field agent, but if all went well, after the one month mark passed and she provided something satisfactory, she’d be able to have her actual orientation. Strike Commander Morrison would fly out to New York and work with Sergeant Baker to give her the “Agent” title and to figure out her first assignments. So far though, she’s never felt more right, and has never felt like she belonged quite so much as she feels when she’s here. While the hours are long and filled with extremely tedious busywork building her program from the ground up with its own security system, each additional day she’s here, she knows there’s literally nothing else she could possibly rather be doing. She can get through the busywork easily.

She’d been especially surprised upon being told by Sergeant Adrienne Baker right before move-in that so long as it was size-appropriate for the dorm, they were all allowed to keep pets. It turned out to be a newly-instated policy because Shari, their next-newest agent who’d just joined last year, had a bearded dragon she’d refused to part with after having raised it from a hatchling. This meant that even on the days where she would end up back in her room exhausted and burnt out, she’d have someone waiting for her. Being able to bring Caramel was by far one of the best parts of all of this, not to mention the fact that anyone on base who met the outlandishly friendly rabbit would usually fall in love with her immediately. An orange colored French Lop that Celie had gotten for her fifteenth birthday, the first one she’d celebrated with her new family, Caramel was extremely friendly, even for a rabbit, and would cuddle up to anyone who would let her. She only hoped that if she was accepted into the fray and got sent away on assignment, that she could take Caramel with her. She had been worried about the care she might receive at home with both of her parents working even more than she currently did, but it luckily ended up not having to be a concern given that she got to take her to Watchpoint anyways.

She finds friends here, amongst other things. She also finds her place in the world (or so it seems), something to do that she loves (despite the crazy amount of initial busywork), and an endless amount of excitement over the fact that her future might actually hold something now.

Aside from her, the staff at Watchpoint: New York is relatively small. Sergeant Baker is usually only around once in a while - the lower floors of their building are responsible for a bunch of smaller technical support tasks, which also include mass-production of weapons parts (specifically metal plates and other such small pieces that they would regularly ship overseas to be assembled by Chief Engineer Lindholm), the production of much of the Overwatch-issued clothing and also is the communications hub for many of the Overwatch satellites that help broadcast signals between all the aircraft. It was clear that there were many things on paper here that needed to be brought into the realm of technology, and safely, which is why she’s here in the first place. Her oversight requires her to be bouncing around between floors and usually on the lower ones, so Celie doesn’t see her much.

There’s also Corporal Maia Rodriguez - a hardened woman from years in a bad marriage. She was putting herself first and working with Overwatch to try to reorient her life and be a better person for her children. When they’d first been introduced and within those first few hours Maia hardly said a word and seemed like she had an overly gruff demeanor, but that day at lunch, Celie makes some sort of offhand comment about the tour that she turns into a joke, and Maia is cracking a smile and laughing with the rest of the crew, surprising them all since the only factor that had changed in their surroundings to cause such a thing was Celie. She was Sergeant Baker’s closest lower officer, and her chief responsibility was being a communications and upkeep specialist on their satellites (which Celie had also been working on a security protocol for, one that could be remotely and securely uploaded to the AI within the satellites themselves).

Then there were Samuel Powers and Alexander James. Both of them were childhood friends who stuck together like glue almost every minute of the day when they weren’t working. Sam was responsible for the base’s physical security and the team that helped him with staffing the building with those physical security measures. He was very excited to be working with Celie to create a new ID system so that they could do away with keycards and work on fingerprinting and DNA in cases where it was necessary. There were multiple failsafes that Celie would need to include in the future on that - ways to make sure that it was actually who they say they are at the door, ways to make sure a fingerprint could not just be stolen somehow and used, all those types of things. The dangers to Overwatch, even in locations like here at NY, were numerous, and it was crucial to help try to keep her new friends safe along with all her new coworkers as well. Sam also had a tendency to be the cook of the group - his big brother nature seemed to get him very far with that kind of attitude, and the meals he provided for them made Celie wonder if she would have liked her birth mother’s cooking, too. Alex on the other hand was their communications liaison, essentially responsible for being the face of the Watchpoint and communicating anything that Sergeant Baker needed spread between locations if she could not get to it herself. He was an outgoing individual with a very loud personality and it fit the bill for the job almost a little too well.

Shari Bhatia was their newest agent, along with Celie, having only been here a year. She worked mostly in finances but as of recently had also more or less become in charge of recording all their imports and exports as they took in material and would ship out the finished weapons pieces and armor pieces. Another person who was very excited about having a secure system, which was the one thing keeping them from moving forward for so long. This wasn’t just something any store-bought security system could handle - it would need a little extra love. They got along well, though they didn’t see each other much.

And then, there was Tito. He was known that way around base because of his historic one-liner, “Only my grandmother calls me Antonio” upon introduction, but Antonio Ramirez definitely makes Celie think that if there’s favoritism here at the Watchpoint, he may as well adopt her as his little sister because the way he watches out for her is something that Celie hadn’t known until recently. His main specialty was the coordination and upkeep of the safe houses of Overwatch. Essentially, it involved him having a bunch of aliases and setting things up with third party companies to have the houses kept for when not being used by either off-duty agents for leisure purposes or active duty agents for the purpose they were actually meant for.

He’s the one that is by far friendliest to her and most open, probably because of a few facets of his personality she could relate to (one in particular being that they both preferred the same gender over the opposite when it came to romantic relations, which sent them on their way to being friends very quickly). He is also the one who most often comes to visit her in her cubicle on days where he isn’t quite as busy, and will brighten her day with a good joke here and there. She definitely treats him like a big brother over the course of the first few weeks she’s there.

In the last week before her possible orientation, she’s completely and utterly frazzled. She tries to think what the best things would be to try to prepare for in her upcoming presentation, which she’ll have to give in front of whatever higher up they decide to send for her assignment if it works out. It’ll probably be Commander Morrison if she has to guess, since he’s effectively the leader of everyone at the moment.

The morning of, she’s ultra-appreciative when Tito fixes her a cup of herbal tea and tells her to try to calm down. She’d hardly slept the night before. It was unlike her to be nervous about something like this - she was usually very good at taking to people, but something in her brain keeps telling her that even one screw up here might lead to her not being able to do the one thing she feels as though she wants to do with her life.

At nine AM sharp, she stands outside the door to their tiny briefing room on one of the higher floors of the Watchpoint.

She pats down her Overwatch-issue dress shirt right before she steps in, the small panel containing the program and its intricacies, securely in her hands. This was her final test and she hopes to everything that she knows that the program will work and do exactly what it’s supposed to do. Inside the room are several people - she recognizes Sergeant Baker and Alex, who seems very excited to see her and listen to what she has to offer, and beside them are an agent that Celie does not recognize, as well as next to him someone she absolutely does.

She gives a proper salute to Strike Commander Jack Morrison - it seems almost surreal for him to be here, in their little briefing room, but it’s essential for him to be here so that she can be assigned if this is to work out perfectly. “Good morning,” he says once he has introduced her to the other agent - another person who had flown out with him from the Swiss HQ who had a small degree of cybersecurity training to put her system to a small test. “Let’s see what you have to offer, Miss Durand.”

“Of course, Sir. Thank you.” She works with Mario Russo, the other agent, to hook everything up to not just the holo-projector on the table but her system to his laptop as well. Right as she’s about to start her presentation though, she stops and looks at Mario, pointing to the laptop. “This is a dummy computer, right? There’s nothing crucial on here?”

“I mean, this one is identical to all the others we have - everything stored on it is just on a thumb drive in Commander Morrison’s office, so no, nothing crucial - why?” He raises a brow and Celie nods, seeming to sigh in relief.

“The system has a self-destruct protocol of sorts - I’ll get to that. I’d like Commander Morrison to see it in real time, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing more harm than good here.” She gives a weak laugh, heart pounding and ready to break out from behind her ribcage any second, or at least that’s what it feels like.

Mario nods and steps back to let her present. “Good luck,” he says to her with an encouraging and kind smile, which she greatly appreciates.

“Thank you for your time today, Commander Morrison. I’ve created something here that I really hope will make the lives of everyone here at Overwatch easier, in the way of making all their information easier to access, not to mention securely stored.” She tries to keep her voice level, and just lets herself say what she knows. The new confidence seems to build, and she holds her head up high as she explains and brings up a 3-D projection of the program itself - something she herself had also made sure was possible, to make it more easily presentable. 

“This system itself is multi-faceted with several different layers of security, able to be built on and the visuals of each section can be altered to better suit whatever information that’s being stored. Right now, I’ve mostly been working on the basics to make sure that everything else is seamless. At the center, here,” she moves several components aside in the 3-D projection with her hands (trying to hide that they’re shaking), revealing a housing that looks like an intricate motherboard in the middle of the entire program, “is the motherboard I plan to use to hold the official AI, as well as the code of the system to work alongside it to protect it.” She moves slightly back to one of the other sections of the program, deep within the security mainframe. “Here at one of the most solidly-protected points, I’ve also created the space for any personal or sensitive information. Everywhere else are blank templates. Some of them have already been designated and tweaked just a little bit, but anyone who uses it is more than welcome to come to me and ask me to change it to their own liking.” She quickly catches herself at the implication of her words. “That is, of course, if you feel like this will be an asset to the organization.”

She goes through each of the different sections she’s made so far - and shows him what they will look like once it’s also converted into a 2-D program on the actual laptops and systems they’ll be using to input everything. So far she’s made sections for schematics on weaponry and armor (for Chief Engineer Lindholm), accounting and finance that’s split into multiple sections by branch and Watchpoint and already stands ready for the carryover of data, as well as medical data that tied into the personal data sections that she had made (lovingly) with Angela Ziegler in mind. She explains each of them, and shows him some of the mock data she’d put into it so that she’d have something concrete to have as an example.

Finally, she gets to the last part of her presentation, where she looks to Mario and nods, then turns back to Commander Morrison. “The last feature of this system is a self-destruct feature of sorts. It’s what would happen if someone were to try to hack into the program to try to extract any of the personal information of the agents, or any of the other data that’s housed within any part of the mainframe. The security is tightest around the very middle, but each section itself has three layers of security. If all layers are broken in order, the following will happen. Mario, I’ll need you to try to hack into the system.” She stands back. “I know it’s a dummy laptop, but I’m apologizing in advance for the damage it might do.”

Mario sits down at the station and uses his laptop to establish remote access. It takes him a few minutes before he finally makes it into at least the outside part of the mainframe. Once he tries to get in, he makes it through the first layer after a few minutes but then seems to slow on trying to crack into the second. Commander Morrison seems to turn a bit and say something to Sergeant Baker, and Celie looks at the other tech support. “Want me to…?” She gestures to the computer and Mario smiles sheepishly. Commander Morrison looks up and gives Celie a long look. She gulps slightly, hoping it’s not a bad thing.

“You can’t get in?” He asks Mario, and he shakes his head. If anything, the grin that comes up on Sergeant Baker’s face is mischievous, and the look on Commander Morrison’s face is… maybe amused? Celie isn’t 100% sure. She sits down and Mario moves the laptop towards her, giving up control of the presentation.

“What I’m going to do is target the weaknesses of the system. I’m… not keen on giving away trade secrets unless I have to, but I’d prefer if I have to, to do so with only Commander Morrison in the room.” She says and starts typing away. “Forgive me if I can’t really talk through this process, essentially it’s just creating a virus that’s going to make the system turn on itself and release the information.” She moves through and at least brings up the 3-D projection so that Sergeant Baker and Commander Morrison have something to look at, to watch as the red of the virus code slowly emerges, then breaks directly through the second layer, travels to another part of the mainframe, and then gets through the third layer by targeting one of the other parts of the system and weakening it, then another.

Eventually she gets through and then as soon as the data seems to be given up, the laptop starts to make a noise that sounds like the fan inside is going on absolute overdrive. This lasts for a few long, painful moments in which the noise starts to grate more and more, before the laptop simply goes dark. It comes back and goes through a sequence she’d designed, which will wipe and fry the hard drive and motherboard and hopefully much of the circuitry if everything goes exactly like it should. After everything, the laptop shouldn’t be able to turn back on again, ever. The same thing would happen to any device or by extension entire system that somehow managed to actually get into the information.

Once it’s done and the computer is infected, for lack of better term, she confirms that the laptop is completely dead. She takes apart the bottom of the laptop and checks and sure enough, connections between many parts of the circuits and parts of the motherboard have been overheated by the self-destruct protocol of her system to the point of either having melted to each other and the surrounding parts, the fan of the laptop having been overridden to bring the hot air all the way in and circulating it as such. Commander Morrison sits up slightly and tilts himself in the chair to get a closer look at the fried and melted wires.

“This, essentially, will happen to anything that tries to access our info - whether it’s a remote device like a laptop or some form of communicator, or a full system. The motherboard will overheat itself. The information and the virus to do so will go hand in hand unless it’s an authorized access of our system. You have to have location and your own credentials to use the system, and I’ve created a cyclical password and username change algorithm as well, just to make sure that the system can’t be breached with old information, either. Again, um… I’m sorry about the damage to it,” she says in a small voice.

“No, no, don’t worry about it,” Commander Morrison says and motions for her to push the laptop towards him. He tests it himself and takes a close look. He nods. “Impressive.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Celie says with some degree of relief in her voice. Her heart is still beating into her throat. She hopes so much that this will work.

“Truthfully, we’ve been looking for something like this for a long time. We can go to other peoples’ programs and systems all we want, but… with the UN breathing down our necks, we need to have something like this that’s homegrown in order to keep our information on track. I think with some time and tweaks, as well as if we can get you out into the field to the other Watchpoints to work with those who will use the system the most to teach them how, we might have something on our hands here.” He leans back, seeming satisfied.

Sergeant Baker smiles and leans back in her own chair, crossing her legs. “So, Jack, how’s my computer prodigy doing?”

“Adrienne, don’t give me any shit,” Commander Morrison laughs slightly, and Sergeant Baker returns it. “I think I have a few ideas for how we can get started in all this. I’ll need until tomorrow to iron everything out as far as where I’ll be sending you and for how long, but at the moment, there’s really no reason for me to say no. Solid presentation.” He then says and turns towards Celie once more.

“I told you, Jackie,” Sergeant Baker practically drawls and then cuts it out at another pointed look from Commander Morrison. “She’s like a songbird. Anyone who hears her song is drawn in and she makes them happy with her kindness.” 

As if her heart can’t possibly race any more, it’s already starting to pound a little faster. She flushes at Sergeant Baker’s compliment, but keeps her gaze firm on Morrison. “I’m glad you thought so, Sir. This is the first time I’ve tackled making anything like this, so I imagine as I grow to understand the program and its facets more, it will eventually become beyond what even I could have expected it to ever be.” She fidgets with her hands behind her back, hoping her nerves don’t play out, though internally shouting over the implication of his words.

Mario actually turns to her and smiles brightly, mouthing what looks like ‘Congrats!’ before Sergeant Baker speaks up again.

“So then, Agent Durand,” Commander Morrison looks towards Celie, who stands up very straight and tries to make it look like she’s not absolutely losing her damn mind with nerves. “I’ll have your first assignments tomorrow, but for now… congratulations, and welcome to Overwatch,” he stands and holds a hand out to her, which she takes with a grip as confident as she can muster and shakes his hand. This whole situation is surreal.

Of course, she knows there’s going to be an absolute buttload of paperwork that will need to be signed by tomorrow night, but as far as Sergeant Baker seems to be concerned once her and Celie are out the door and letting Commander Morrison and Mario clean up, is making sure Celie will have dinner with everyone on base tonight to celebrate.

She agrees, but doesn’t expect dinner to be, well, anything more than just dinner. Upon leaving the briefing room and as soon as everyone else is out of sight and she’s alone, Celie sinks with her back against the wall and pinches herself in the arm. She doesn’t wake up. “This is real,” she keeps repeating to herself there in the hallway of Watchpoint: New York.

Celie isn’t the only one who had a presentation today - three recruits are being added to the lineup today with her included, though the other two are weapon fabrication techs and will be spending most of their time on the workshop levels. She walks into the lounge and dining area for dinner and finds a literal party going on - which she, and the two other new agents, are quickly pulled to the epicenter of as Tito runs forward to hug her and jump up and down with her in his arms. While Celie appreciates each congratulations that comes her way, she finds herself slightly overwhelmed after a few hours of it (seriously, it seems like almost everyone on the Watchpoint is here), so she slips out and away, taking the elevator up to the highest it can go, then ditching it and hitting the stairwell to get up to the roof.

Watchpoint: New York is a skyscraper like the rest, but the view when Celie peeks over one specific edge of the building, she’s treated to her favorite thing. The view tonight is clear as ever and the weather is warm enough that she’s comfortable without a coat. She loses track of time as she stares out at the City That Never Sleeps.

“You okay? Didn’t think I’d find you up here,” a voice calls her out of her reverie, and she turns to see Sergeant Baker walk through the door that leads out to the roof.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just taking a few minutes to get away and enjoy the view.”

The woman comes up beside, resting her arms over the railing much like Celie. “You really seem to like it here,” Sergeant Baker muses, and Celie nods.

“I love it here. I’ve always loved the city. All the people, all the noise… and this,” Celie gestures at the skyline, “it’s like looking out at a starry sky, all the buildings with the lights still on like this. Behind every one are people living their own lives, and the sheer magnitude of knowing how many people there are… it makes you feel so small, but in such a beautiful way that I don’t really mind it all too much.”

“You appreciate life in a way most people don’t learn to do the whole time they're alive,” the Sergeant laughs.

Celie turns pink. “I think it’s because I wasn’t really able to enjoy it for so long. Now, things are different, and I can’t get enough of… well, living.”

“It’s one of the things that give you such a bright personality and warm demeanor,” Sergeant Baker laughs. Celie has no idea why everyone else is so intimidated by the woman as their C.O. since she’s extremely kind. “I actually came looking for you because I have something for you. I’ve actually been working on it for a few weeks, since I knew right away that you’d impress Jack, and that you’d get in, so I’ve been keeping this a secret.” She produces a small bundle of cloth out from under her arm.

Celie takes it once Sergeant Baker extends it her way. She unfolds it to find a women’s cargo vest, in a chocolate brown color - but done in a way that’s almost elegant - the clothing is obviously meant for style and functionality. She turns it around to the back when Sergeant Baker twirls her finger as if to tell her to flip it, and finds what seems to be the main attraction of the garment. Hand-embroidered wings stretch from the upper part of the back near the shoulders all the way down to almost the seam on the lower back. “These are…” Celie trails off, expression incredulous.

“Yeah, I thought about it for a while. I know I joke about you being like a songbird all the time, but… these are Goldfinch wings,” Sergeant Baker says, and Celie takes a long moment to inspect them. There is even iridescent thread used in the highlight colors to make the wings shimmer in the light of the city. The wings are true to life. “All the poster kids stick out for some reason or another. You deserve to have something like that too, so I decided to make this. I really hope you like it,” Sergeant Baker says and regards her for a moment.

“No, I… this is… it’s gorgeous,” Celie looks at the best and rubs her eyes, trying to hold back the sting of tears.

“I wanted to pick a species of bird that existed where you came from.” Sergeant Baker explains and Celie’s gaze snaps up to her, curious.

“You mean… Québec?” She asks, in a small voice, and Sergeant Baker nods. A flash of something almost melancholy flashes in Celie’s eyes, but the smile that the C.O. sees from her right then is very much genuine, as though the memories were bittersweet. Feeling accepted like this had been all Celie had ever wanted in life. “I never thought I’d fit in so fast and so well, I… you guys all treat me like family, and I have a history of being isolated. Being here, working with Overwatch, has really changed everything. It feels like a dream, knowing I can stay, and that this really is going to be my job now… I really can’t believe it’s actually happening.” Celie looks out at the city, holding the best close to her chest.

“I had faith in you every step of the way,” Sergeant Baker smiles. “Jack will have your assignments done by tomorrow morning, so… take the night to enjoy the party, okay?”

“I will,” Celie answers and slips the vest over her long-sleeved shirt, and feels her confidence swell when her gaze is pulled back to the skyline. “I’ll be right back in,” she nods and Sergeant Baker sends her one last smile before she re-enters the building.

True to her word after the festivities, the next day Celie is called back to the briefing room before lunch. Waiting for her are Sergeant Baker and Commander Morrison. “Afternoon, Agent,” Commander Morrison greets and Celie answers with a salute. Her breath almost catches in her throat - she’s an Agent now, not just Miss Durand and a bubble of pride wells up in her chest. “I’ve got lots of papers for you to sign and some exciting news about your first assignments.” He has her sit down across from him. Mario seems to have a pretty good handle on the seeming mountain of paperwork beside Commander Morrison and Sergeant Baker (who looks a little worse for wear after last night’s festivities).

Most of it seems pretty standard. Commander Morrison takes her through all of the final information they’ll need from her and about her in order to get Celie situated in the ranks of Overwatch. A lot of signatures, initials, and legibly printed words later, Celie starts to feel the telltale signs of semantic satiation with her own name. By the time all the is finally over, he finally leans back and places his hands on the table.

“We have a fairly easy assignment for you first. In two weeks, we’ll be sending you to two assignments, four months each - to Switzerland first, to HQ. Angela is going to need some help working all our records in, and there’s, well. You’re going to be in charge of recording every cough, sniffle, cut, and surgery we’ve had to do. Then you’ll need to go to Watchpoint: Dublin for another four months, we’ll need the Blackwatch records done too. We’ve kept those separate for storage reasons for now, but we won’t need to after this. Think you can handle that?” He looks up at Celie but she sits up a little straighter and gives him a smile.

“I really look forward to it. I’ve never visited the HQ, but I saw it from afar when I had my surgery there when I was younger. I’d love to see Doctor Ziegler again, and to thank her again for what she’s done for me.”

“I’m sure you’ll see plenty of her while you’re there,” Commander Morrison doesn’t miss the fondness with which Celie speaks of Agent Mercy.

“Do you, um…” Celie looks toward Sergeant Baker who raises a brow. “If I’m there for a few months, do you think the dorms will allow me to, um…”

“Oh, right!” Sergeant Baker remembers, almost right away. “I don’t think HQ will let you, but I’ll make a few calls and see about Dublin. Jack, they don’t let pets in HQ, right?”

“I mean, usually only service animals, but how big are we talking?”

“I have a rabbit,” Celie says and Commander Morrison almost guffaws.

“Oh god, I thought you were going to say mastiff or something. I don’t see why not, as long as you’re responsible for any messes.” He shrugs and Sergeant Baker smiles. Celie’s shoulders seem to sink in relief. The last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Sergeant Baker seems to be solid that she’ll stick to her promise of checking with Dublin, so Celie knows that until her assignment starts she can rest a little easier, though she’s no less excited over the next two weeks as she settles into life with Overwatch.


End file.
